Bagehot

Together again (for now)

A four-week break from the office helped Tony and Gordon rediscover what they had lost. Will it last?

TONY BLAIR may have the most famous (and most irritating) grin in British politics, but during this election campaign, it is the image of the supposedly dour, often sullen chancellor wreathed in smiles that will stick in the memory.

It is not quite true, as some have suggested, that Gordon Brown has been the dominant figure of the campaign—that, for both good and ill, has been Mr Blair. What is not in doubt is that Mr Brown has emerged from the campaign politically stronger than ever before. Moreover, he has done so not at Mr Blair's expense, but by giving the prime minister the kind of unstinting support that has often been lacking during the past eight years.

Given their recent history, the transformation in the Blair-Brown relationship during the past four weeks has been remarkable. On the eve of the campaign, there was still uncertainty as to what role Mr Brown would play. He had been infuriated by Mr Blair's decision to stay in the job for a few more years, by the resurrection of an old enemy, Alan Milburn, to take charge of Labour's re-election strategy and by rumours that he would be forced to move to the Foreign Office. But the notion that he would be a peripheral, sulky figure during the campaign was always implausible. For all their differences, Mr Brown and Mr Blair both wanted Labour to get the largest majority possible.

Yet their willingness, once Labour's focus groups had revealed that pictures of them together provoked much greater enthusiasm than when they were on their own, to turn themselves into an unprecedented election double act was unexpected. For both men, it involved swallowing resentment and pride. For Mr Blair, it was an admission that he had been so tarnished by Iraq that Labour's chances of a third term might be jeopardised if he were the lone figurehead of the campaign. For Mr Brown, it was an acceptance that his own fate remained inextricably tied to that of Mr Blair. So determined are they both to hold on to power that what might seem impossible to normal people was, to them, fairly easy.

What followed initially provoked guffaws from political reporters who had spent years covering their feuds. A party political broadcast directed by Anthony Minghella—a syrupy portrait of a political marriage in which they gazed into each other's eyes and chuckled over memories of old spats—seemed to invite ridicule. But only days later came the launch of Labour's manifesto at which Mr Brown talked enthusiastically about the part that private providers could play in offering choice in publicly funded health care. Even hardened cynics were taken aback.

From that point onwards, the two men were hardly ever seen out of each other's company, rushing to Birmingham to share the pain of the wretched Rover workers, pumping the flesh to get the vote out in marginal constituencies, and appearing in countless photo opportunities and press conferences. When, at the end of last week, the attorney-general's advice on the legality of the war was leaked to newspapers and journalists scented blood, the chancellor interposed his body between Mr Blair and the media pack. The prime minister, said Mr Brown, had not only behaved entirely properly in the run-up to war, but he would have done exactly the same thing. Turning up to be interviewed by Sir David Frost last Sunday, Mr Blair said chirpily: “I'm on my own this morning.”

It isn't just the ruthless professionalism of a couple of seasoned politicians. There's more to it than that. The body language has become increasingly relaxed; their tributes to each other are no longer paid through gritted teeth. Thrown together by necessity during the campaign, they started talking to each other in a way they had not for more than a decade and rediscovered, to their surprise, something close to mutual admiration. What nobody knows, including them, is whether their rapprochement will survive after May 6th.

A test for Mr Brown

Hopes that it may rest on two assumptions. The first is that Mr Brown no longer wants to cast himself as the drag anchor on public-service reform. That may be because his old opposition was driven less by ideology than by the need to find differences with his former friend. It may also be because policies he was once sceptical about are beginning to work: the English NHS, for instance, is performing better than the unreformed versions in Scotland and Wales. Mr Brown's allies maintain that it is nonsense to suggest he has been anti-reform: what irked the chancellor was the self-consciously confrontational way in which Mr Blair set about it. Mr Brown, they say, is happy with both the distinctly New Labour manifesto and the departmental five-year plans that preceded it.

The second assumption is that Mr Brown is reconciled to allowing Mr Blair to carry on for another three years, should he wish to do so, without staging a repeat of the kind of power play that he and his followers mounted about a year ago. In the past few weeks, Mr Blair has as good as anointed Mr Brown as his chosen successor; it is also quite possible that he will quit sooner, especially if the government holds and loses a referendum on the European constitution. For his part, Mr Brown would like nothing better than a smooth transition that would remove the risk of the bitterness that still poisons the Tory party 15 years after Margaret Thatcher was forced out as leader.

It could, however, just as easily turn sour. Mr Brown's self-styled supporters, many of them restless and disaffected, some of them fundamentally hostile to New Labour, have caused plenty of trouble in the past between the prime minister and the chancellor and yearn to see the back of Mr Blair. The future, not just for the Blair-Brown relationship, but also for Labour's ability to win power, may well depend on how determined Mr Brown is to rein them in.